Here We Go Again

There is a Website called Procrastinators.org, dediced to the Procrastinators Club. Its motto: Productivity is overrated.

They should hang a banner emblazoned with that in our state Capitol. It pretty well sums up what happens with our budget negotiations every year.

If you’re surprised to see these talks are going nowhere as the constitutional deadline approaches, you haven’t been paying attention. This is standard operating procedure.

The only difference now is that the collapsed economy is forcing much tougher decisions than usual. Pennsylvania is facing a year-end deficit of $3.2 billion, and there's no guarantee the outlook will start brightening anytime soon.

Gov. Ed Rendell this week proposed temporarily raising the state’s personal income tax to produce an additional $1.5 billion a year. Legislative Republicans oppose a tax increase and offered draconian cuts in the Senate GOP’s budget plan, which was rejected by a House committee on a party line vote. House Democrats say they want significant cuts before they’ll approve a tax hike.

My problem with some cuts is that they’ll just increase the local tax burden through property taxes, much less fair than the state income tax. I know this appeals to legislators because they can claim not to have raised taxes, but it’s just shifting the financial responsibility.

By the same token, Rendell is going to have to demonstrate real sacrifice to have any chance of selling a personal income tax increase, particularly in the Republican-controlled Senate. So he’ll have to cut much more deeply than he has proposed doing so far.

It goes without saying that they’ll miss the June 30 constitutional budget deadline. Likewise, rest assured that all the important discussions will take place behind closed doors and involve a handful of horsetrading party leaders.

It’s the Pennsylvania way.

My guess is that eventually, legislators will get tired of missing their extended beach time and mistreating payless state employees. They’ll come to some kind of compromise involving spending reductions and new revenue, everyone will wring their hands about this flawed process — and then we’ll go through exactly the same thing next year.

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Interestingly, 90% or more of the legislators get re-elected every two or four years despite holding the budget hostage each year for political horse trading purposes. I think the tendency is for each of us to view our own representative as honest, hard-working and above petty politics. We then perceive all of the other representatives and senators as "the problem". We can't all be correct, can we?

A well-known definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. We voters in Pennsylvania do not like to think of ourselves as insane. Therefore, instead of being outraged by the annual state budget debacle, we shrug our shoulders and think of it as business as usual.

Productivity always yields to partisan and parochial politics.

Posted By: John Servis | Jun 18, 2009 3:21:55 PM

the procrastinators site looks interesting. Maybe I'll check it tomorrow or Saturday.......

Posted By: gianluca | Jun 18, 2009 4:36:24 PM

No rush

Posted By: bill white | Jun 18, 2009 4:52:37 PM

Maybe I should have put off filing my state income tax? Alas, I guess it doesn't work that way, eh?

OT- I was thinking of opening a baloney street cart in Harrisburg. Then my marketing manger said...

Couple of late points:
When Tom Ridge was governor and the GOP held both houses of the GA, the budget was approved in May (and I think one year even in April). Easy to do when the opponents don't have a voice. You want productivity, get a dictatorship...
To the second point -- everybody yaks about the re-election rate and how incumbents don't do anything etc etc. Truth is, they get re-elected precisely for the fact that they are voting with the interests of their particular voters in mind. Let's face it -- people who vote for Doug Reichley aren't going to be happy with him going to bat for more money for urban centers like Allentown, and those supporting Jennifer Mann will look askance should she decide that more social programs need to go away to balance the budget. If you don't like this dynamic, try and develop consensus among the voters for this (amid all the sleazy political tricks to sway public opinion) -- OR start communicating with officeholders that truly courageous decisions will be rewarded with more than dirty tricks in the next election.
Final modest proposal -- based on what happens at private companies facing big money troubles -- each legislator is told to identify 10 percent of the state money being spent in their district that can be cut to balance the budget as is, and communicate that to their constituents and see how they feel about tax hikes then.

Posted By: bob | Jun 22, 2009 3:02:02 PM

Bob: I agree with everything you said except one: I think they get re-elected largely because their districts have been gerrymandered to protect incumbents. To get voted out when they have such a big registration advantage, they have to REALLY screw up.

Posted By: bill white | Jun 22, 2009 3:12:20 PM

Bill -- excellent point on Gerrymandering; I would add that in that environment the courageous decisionmaking I referenced is lumped together with personal ethical failures as the only things that put a re-election at risk for incumbents.
Honestly (an odd word for a discussion of the legislature, but so be it), the two best things we could do to clear out the filthy stable of the PA electoral process would be merit selection of judges and taking some level of control of redistricting away from the legislature.

Posted By: bob | Jun 23, 2009 9:24:11 AM

Absolutely on both counts. There have been many attempts to clean up the redistricting process, but the party leaders always squashed them. The last thing most legislators want is something that will make their seats less secure, so we're stuck now with that flawed process again for the next decade.